23 Sep
2000
23 Sep
'00
1:39 a.m.
Xerox PARC did a very cool thing a couple years ago
and held "The Last
Xerox Star Demo". About 600 people (mostly PARC employees but it also
generated a lot of outside interest) showed up.
It was about an hour and a half long, showing off the features and
functionality of the Star environment. I don't remember many
specifics, but one thing that did catch my attention was its ability
to display mathematical formulas in their more natural form, i.e. when
a division operation was typed in it would put the numerator on top
and the divisor on bottom with a horizontal line in between, and it
did this automatically. You could also dynamically re-map the
keyboard to get different symbol sets or even different language
characters. It would show the new keyboard layout on the display so
you could use it for reference.
The interface seemed more intuitive in some cases, very logically
organized overall. There was some rawness to it but overall it struck
me as being more advanced than what MS and Apple are offering even
today.
There were some elements that were not as advanced, but there had been
15 years of development effort between the Star and Windows, and
Windows still lagged.
Sellam International Man of Intrigue
and Danger
My Micom 2000 from 1977 also had a similiar ability. They called
it "subscript" and "superscript". It was superior in it's
abilities to
anything I've seen up to the mid-eighties. While it wouldn't draw
curves it's graphics abilities allowed connecting points
automatically. Using the subscript or superscript
commands you could do a proper fraction or power of # and also
footnote numbers in smaller script. I still can"t do that with this
Pegasus editor I'm using now. It used a very fast(for it's day)
Qume daisy-wheel printer.
This companies first production model shipped in July 1975 the
month that Gates and Allen inked the first agreement with MITS for
MS-Basic and Dick Hauser had only just opened the first computer
store. By the time Jobs and Woz had figured out the cicuitry for
their board in 76, Micom had shipped 180 units worth $2 million.
At it's height it had 1100 employees
The innovative owner-partner Stephen Dorsey had earlier formed
and then sold AES. Philips acquired a chunk of Micom in 78 and
then the rest in 83. Dorsey went on to found Voice and Data
Systems a leader in packet technology. His 2 previous start-ups
had annual sales of $200 million.
I also wonder whether he played might have played any role in
the Mitel start-up which was the basis for Cowpland's Corel since
he was such a biggy in Canadian electronics technology.
Apparently NASA among others had a bunch of them. There might
be a few still floating around in Florida.
ciao larry
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